


Sooner or Later

by BrooklynBooks



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Minor Violence, mostly just the Delanceys being their usual selves, so I'm sharing it with you lovely people, this was requested on my tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 14:36:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14499150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynBooks/pseuds/BrooklynBooks
Summary: If Elmer knows how to do one thing, it's care about people and, luckily, that includes you.





	Sooner or Later

For a Lower Manhattan newsie, Elmer certainly spent an awful lot of time in Brooklyn. After selling his papers for the day, he often vanished until well after the sun went down instead of heading to Jacobi’s or the Lodging House with everyone else. His friends liked to joke that he was stealing selling tricks off the Brooklyn newsies, but in reality he went to see you.

You hadn’t always been the reason. One of his sisters lived in Brooklyn and her young son worked with the newsies, so Elmer had long ago been granted permission from Spot Conlon to cross the bridge and sell on his turf with his nephew. He became a regular presence in the lives of all the Brooklyn newsies, including you.

Especially you, since Spot often paired you with the younger newsies and all of them loved Elmer. He made them laugh and taught them cool tricks, like how to make hats out of old newspapers, but he never spoke down to them, never lied to them, and never gave up on them.

You loved him too, although you had decided to take that particular secret to your grave. You couldn’t help it, he was sweet and funny and occasionally quite charming. Plus, his freckles and easy smile did things to your heart that you just couldn’t ignore. Not that he felt the same way. Surely, he thought of you as a newsie first and a girl second.

Except, you had been wrong, impossibly, wonderfully wrong.

Winter had struck the city with a particular vengeance, making times hard for everyone, but especially for the little newsies you and Elmer looked out for. His twice-a-week appearance in Brooklyn had become every day, which surely would have turned you into a blushing mess under any other circumstances. Then the East river froze over and the Brooklyn bridge closed, so Elmer stayed in the Brooklyn Lodging House. His sister’s apartment didn’t have space for him, he had said, not that you minded.

It was Elmer that had noticed you shivering in your bunk, failing to sleep so thoroughly that you had given up trying.

“What happened to your coat?” he asked, sitting down on the edge of your bunk.

“Two-bit needed it more,” you stuttered through chattering teeth, pointing towards a little girl sound asleep in the next bunk over. “I’m worried she won’t survive this winter with her big brother in the Refuge.”

Elmer nodded, frowning at his feet. “I’m worried about you though,” he muttered.

You weren’t sure you heard him correctly.

“Do you mind if I…?” He made a weird sort of gesture that seemed to imply him laying down next to you. “It’d be warmer, anyway.”

You nodded and he curled up beside you, staring with distant, unfocused eyes at your lips. You wondered if they had turned blue or if he wasn’t really looking at anything. Despite the knot of electricity stirring in your stomach, it was warmer with him so close.

“You don’t have to worry about me, you know,” you whispered to him, jolting him back to the present.

He frowned. “Sure, I do. You’re my girl.”

Exhaustion must be getting to him, you thought, for him to say that. He didn’t seem to realize what he’d said and you didn’t bother correcting him. Instead, you shifted closer to him, ending up with your head against his chest and his arm around you. He placed a kiss on your temple and you smiled before falling asleep, feeling warm and safe.

Neither of you spoke about it through the winter, your focus solidly fixed on surviving, on the little ones surviving, but something changed when spring finally arrived. You hadn’t seen Elmer in a couple weeks, one of his siblings in Manhattan had fallen ill during the last snowfall, but he suddenly appeared, bringing the first real warm day with him.

You noticed his smile first as he bounced towards you, meaning all was well in Manhattan, and your heart leapt like it wanted to escape your chest altogether. When he stopped in front of you, he held up a single, blue flower and asked if you’d really like to be his girl. You still couldn’t say where the courage came from, but you answered with a kiss, soft and shy.

Many more kisses followed, more nights spent feeling safe and warm, and dates that really just amounted to you and him exploring a park together, but you wouldn’t have had it any other way. He still split his time between the boroughs, however, and occasionally that meant you didn’t see each other for a few days.

This time, he’d been called away because his sister had just had a baby. You’d sent him off with a kiss and a promise to send word if he needed you. After a few days of imagining how stressed he must be, you decided to surprise him by visiting the Manhattan newsies. You could at least help him sell a few extra papers, you thought, he’d done more than that for you.

Except, no one had told you that the Manhattan streets were watched, by more malicious eyes than a few street kids. No one had warned you about the Delanceys. You ran into them as you made your way from the bridge to the Manhattan Lodging House and, apparently, they recognized you as a Brooklyn newsie.

They made their opinion on trespassers clear when they knocked the living daylights out of you. Fights you could handle, Spot made sure every Brooklyn newsie could hold their own, but they were much bigger and older than most newsies. Plus, a life of regular meals made them stronger. The odds just weren’t with you.

A shift kick from a steel-toed boot made you lose your breath. One ear rang sharply after they struck you with their brass knuckles, while the other felt muffled. Blood ran from your nose, from your dead ear, from your mouth. They’d twisted your arms to hold you back and now your shoulder ached and wouldn’t move, leaving you without your dominant hand. They ripped wood off the alleyway fence and cracked it across your jaw.

The world blurred and then vanished altogether.

You woke to muffled shouting. You recognized your name, the sound broken and fragile, but you couldn’t pick out where it came from. The ground spun beneath you, the sky and the walls of the alleyway shifting in a blue-black haze. Arms reached for you and you flinched backwards, but they caught and held you steady.

Not the Delanceys.

“Holy Mary…” Someone’s voice broke through to you, soft and gentle, but fraying at the edges, close to the point of breaking. “Come on, Stars, please come back to me.”

Stars.

Elmer’s nickname for you because… you always got me seein’ stars, love.

The world snapped back into place and there he was, his freckles scattered across the concern in his face and his smile gone. His soft brown eyes were strained beyond recognition, red-ringed and magnified, and your heart broke to see it. He did not like to cry, so you knew his tears fell because he could not keep them back.

“Elmer?” you croaked, reaching out for him.

He gasped with relief and kissed your hand, muttering, “I’m here. I’m right here. Stars, I’m so sorry. You’re gonna be okay, I promise.”

“Elmer.”

“It’ll be okay. Specs went to get Jack. You just gotta stay with me. It’s alright. It—”

“Elmer.”

“What?”

“You know I love you, right?”

A smile flickered to life underneath the worry in his eyes. “‘Course I do. I love you too.”

“I just wanted to make sure you knew, just in case…”

The color drained from his face and he held you tighter. “Don’t talk like that. You’re… you’re gonna be fine.”

Jack arrived then, but your chest ached and, every time you took a breath, something rattled. One ear still rang dully. You couldn’t hear anything out of the other. Your head spun. The consciousness you did have, you had to fight for.

You remember making it to the Lodging House, Elmer had insisted on carrying you. You remember an older woman shouting directions at frantic newsies, Davey and Les at her side. You thought you saw Spot among them, but you couldn’t be sure.

You woke up to pain in your head, a dull ache in your ear, and a drowsy Elmer nodding off in a chair at your feet. You smiled, still surprised when you thought about how much he cared about you. No one could be that lucky, but somehow you were.


End file.
